Pat Conroy Quotes

I don't think comedy is necessarily an attack. It's finding humour in life. I don't think if you're making a joke about something you're automatically demeaning it.

It's always the paragraphs I loved most, the ones I tenderly polished and re-read with pride, that my editor will suggest cutting.

I can't not put humor in a book.

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that.

Because I find writing painful, I try to get it over with as fast as possible. But I write every day, or I lose the thread.

I usually balance out autobiography with goofy, amusing stuff to help keep the humour in my more serious work.

I'm just not very funny.

I was named Class Clown in the high school yearbook, so I was always turning to comedy and laughter to heal and to get me through things.

I'm not funny. Never have been and, as far as I can tell, I never will be.

There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.

The underlying goal of comedy is feeling not-alone.

I always try to lace my work with just a teensy-weensy bit of humour. It's rather like putting a sprig of feathery stuff in a flower arrangement: I believe humour is a great balancer.

I love writing but it's a real pain. It's a miserable process - very satisfying but very miserable.

Rob and I both have this strange sense of comedy which always involves us being the butt of our own jokes.

I was funny -- ha-ha, not peculiar. It was a modest currency, like pennies: pedestrian, somewhat laborious, but a currency nonetheless. I was funny, in public, most often at my own expense.

I've always liked the fact that I could make people laugh at crazy stuff that has happened to me. If it makes you feel better at me falling down the stairs...then I'm going to do it.

If I had a sense of humor, I'd be laughing right now.

I do consider myself a clown and a court jester, and I do love to make people laugh, whether they're laughing with me or at me.

I am never embarrassed by something that makes people laugh.

Thank God for wisecracks.

Comedies are doing well because I think people want to laugh and not think about everything for a little bit.

I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

We all need a laugh and I guess you're just the one.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.